In a career which is now, in 2005, thirty years in length, I’ve
had
the wonderful opportunity to meet and talk with many of the musicians
who
are responsible for creating and presenting the greatest forms of
music.
[For a full list, see this
page on my personal website.] Some are very well known to
both
the specialist and the general public. Others are major figures
within
a select circle of aficionados, and some, though important to the art,
remain almost completely unknown outside their own community of friends
and students. Alan Hovhaness is one of the most special, and
it’s comforting to be able to say that his name
and music are gaining more
and more friends all the time.

He was always known among anyone who ever heard his music, for
it’s
experience will resonate within the heart and mind. A couple of
major
works, such as Mysterious Mountain and the startlingly
wonderful
And
God Created Great Whales were presented in major places early on,
and
achieved recordings that never fail to surprise and delight
— and win new
converts to his very personal sound world. These days,
performances
and recordings are happening more and more, so new generations are able
to enter and fall under his spell.

Rather than place an extended biography here, visit the main
website on the internet devoted to Hovhanessfor details
about
his life and the many discs which have been made. Let me just say
that during my time on the air, it
has always been a particular delight to share his music with listeners,
and the playing of his music usually provokes calls of inquiry about
this
fascinating man. I am now pleased to be able to present this
conversation as a transcript on this webpage.

In the summer of 1985, I made a trip to Seattle for their
production
of Wagner’s Ring
before heading on to Alaska and a wonderful cruise
through the ‘Inside Passage’.
Prior to this visit, I had made contact
with Hovhaness and had arranged to meet him at his home for a
conversation.
He and his wife greeted me, and shared both their lovely abode and the
magnificent view of the mountains. While we all enjoyed some
delicious
apple juice, we settled in to start our chat. The composer was
looking
over a list of his recordings, so we began there . . . . .

Bruce Duffie: Are you pleased that so many of
your works
have been recorded?

Alan Hovhaness: Yes, I am. I wish that some
of the
good records hadn’t gone out of print and
disappeared so long ago.
But I’m always happy about recordings, because
they can reach people which
concerts can’t. I wish that my new
symphonies were recorded because
they’ve had great enthusiasm from audiences, but
nobody knows unless it’s
the town where the conductor happens to like my music. [Chuckles]

BD: Are there enough towns around the world
where conductors
like your music?

AH: Well, I don’t keep
track of it. Of course, a
composer always has frustration about some conductors. [Laughter]

BD: I was going to ask you about that. Have
you heard
many live performances of your music?

AH: Many of them. Now I just try to get
them to send
me a tape, but I try to go. If it’s around
here, I try to go.
The Mount St. Helens Symphony [Symphony no. 50, Op. 360 (1982)]
had a wonderful performance in San José, with George
Cleve.
He did a wonderful job. Very dramatic. It was the best
success
I’ve had for many, many years.

AH: Sometimes I am, but it depends.
Sometimes they
take a very different tempo than I had imagined, and then sometimes
I’ve had trouble myself marking tempos
correctly. If I conduct it
myself, and then mark it, that’s the way I should do
it.
But generally I’ve had good luck. I’ve
had some wonderful conductors,
so I appreciate that.

BD: Have you done much conducting of your work?

AH: Yes, I have done quite a lot. I like to
do first
performances.

BD: Are you the ideal interpreter of your work?

AH: Probably not. I have a better ear to
hear mistakes
that might be in the parts, so I like to be there at first and see that
everything is correct. After that, other people can get the fancy
interpretations. I’m very
straightforward. I don’t interpret
the music. I just conduct it, and give it the drive, or whatever
it needs. But some other people can do other things that I can’t
do.

BD: Do conductors find things in your scores that
you didn’t
even know were there?

AH: I don’t know about
that. It seems to me
that some conductors nowadays are not very well trained
musicians. I know a lot more than they know about what’s
in the score.
[Laughter] When some conductor says, “Oh,
I want to look at this
score,” and then rejects it right away, I know
that they haven’t the
slightest idea what’s in that score. Very
few people can judge a full orchestral score by sight reading it.

BD: Even sitting down at the piano, you don’t
get the colors
and textures.

AH: That’s true, you don’t.
So any conductor who
says that he doesn’t need to have a tape, he’s
a fake, a fraud.

BD: As you approach your 75th birthday, are you
pleased
with some of the earlier works that are in the catalog?

AH: Oh, I’m very happy
about them, especially the symphonies,
and many works which I’m glad have survived,
somehow. [Laughter]

BD:
I understand you destroyed some very early works. Is that true?

AH: Yes, I destroyed a great deal. I just
didn’t
have room for them. I was always growing, and I always wrote so
much,
and then I finally came to a point where I found myself. I saw
Sibelius
when I was a very young man, he said, “In ten
years from now you’ll find
yourself.” So when I found myself, I wanted
to destroy everything
else. I’m glad a few things were published,
and so those I didn’t
destroy. But I destroyed too many pieces. Since I was
living
in a tiny room, I didn’t have the space for many
things. I just didn’t want to see anything
that I didn’t feel was very good.

BD: Did any of those old ideas that you scrapped
show up in new things?

AH: Some of them did, later, yes. A theme
or
two, and... [Chuckles].

* *
*
* *

BD: How much can the composer expect from the
public?

AH: I don’t expect
anything. I’m happily surprised
that I’m still alive and appreciated as much as I
am. But the public
doesn’t bother me so much. The narrowness
of very academic
and so-called intellectual musicians is much more an enemy to the
composer
than the public. If you can reach the public directly,
you can find people who understand you. I don’t
worry about that.
The goal is to reach the public because there’s
so much politics in the
way. You always have some people who go around trying to make
propaganda
against a thing, and they never want to give it a chance. My
first
chance, actually, came through an accident. Leslie Heward,
conductor
of the BBC in England, happened to see a score that I’d
published myself.
I printed it myself, at my own expense. [This is the Exile
Symphony,
now known as Symphony no. 1, Op. 17, conducted in 1939 by Heward, then
principal conductor of the BBC Midland Orchestra in England]. He
got very much interested, and did my music over there. That was
the
first performance I had, and very soon after that, Stokowski conducted
one of my works — the same work, I think.
But then there was a ten-year
period where nobody played my music, and I was known as the composer
who
was never played in Boston. Then I got the idea of starting my
own amateur orchestra, which I did, and so I gave concerts every
year.
Those were very successful. I even made money. I did them
for
charity during the war, but then we even made extra money, so I had
enough to help towards the next concert. I just put it into the
next
concert. I wasn’t trying to make money for
myself, but I was glad
to be able to conduct concerts of my music. Then Stokowski came
into the picture again when I was living in New York, and he really
championed
my music.

BD: Is the modern composer today, as a rule, just
sort
of left to his own devices?

AH: I think so, yes. I can’t
advise anybody,
because it’s a matter of luck if you find a
conductor who likes your music. Especially if you aren’t
played, who’s going to say that this music
is worth playing or not? It may look good on paper, but it may
not
sound good.

BD: So then we come back to recordings
again. They
make it more accessible?

AH: That’s true. That’s
very valuable. I wish
they weren’t so expensive to make because I’d
record my own music if I
could.

BD: Are you pleased with the recordings that
other people
make, though?

AH: Yes, oh, yes, I am.

BD: Are there differences between the commercial
recordings
and live performances of your music?

AH: It’s close enough, as
far as I’m concerned, in
most cases.

BD: You don’t feel that
there’s a spontaneity lacking in
the studio?

AH: No, I haven’t noticed
that, especially if I’m recording
myself. Naturally, you do have some difficulty sometimes.
You
have problems of key players who don’t show up,
or things like that, but
if all my men are there, and they’re good sight
readers, we’re able to
do it fairly fast and it sounds the way I want it to.

* *
*
* *

BD: When you’re writing, do
you write for the public, or
for yourself, or for your players? Whom do you have in your mind?

AH: I think I have everybody in mind. I
especially
have the players in mind, because I want to write as beautifully as
possible for every
instrument. I love the orchestra. I feel that the orchestra
is not understood as well as it could be by many composers.
Orchestration
is so easy to make too thick and muddy. I want every note to be
heard. I love all of the instruments very much and want to do
things that
are natural for those instruments. I like to go back to the
origin
of the instrument — where did it come from, what
was it related to, even
in mythology and ancient times. What’s the
soul of that instrument.
That’s what I’m interested
in.

BD: So then the soul of the instrument
becomes the soul
of your music?

AH: Yes, but of course I write with my own
imagination
for what I want to do, and I don’t worry about
the public. I know
that if I feel something very intensely, somebody else will, sooner or
later.

BD: Are there enough young composers today?

AH: Oh, I think there are too many, unfortunately
for
them, because it is very difficult. You have to be able to have
the
guts to not eat for many days, perhaps. The main thing I tell
them
is to do something practical. Play an instrument well so you can
earn your living that way, because you can’t
count on earning your living
writing music. It took me halfway through my life before
I really could depend on it. I was my own sponsor. I was a
pianist and I did every kind of job there was. I was a jazz
arranger,
and I was a ghost writer for fakes who wanted to have a piece that they’d
‘written,’ but they hadn’t...
[laughter] So I wrote in every style.
Even when I was in the hospital one time, a priest came to me and asked
me to write a wedding march and put his name on it. So I did
it because it amused me. I was bored to death.

BD: [Laughs] So there are some Hovhaness
pieces
that are not even credited as being by Hovhaness?

AH: Oh, of course. They sounded like
Mendelssohn,
or whatever. Whatever that man wanted, okay, you’ll
get it.
[Laughter]

BD: Are you still getting real commissions for
your own
things?

AH: Oh, lots of them, yes. I just finished
a 30-minute
symphony for full orchestra, for the Bellevue Symphony here [Symphony
no.
59, Op. 395 (1985), composed for the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra in
Bellevue, Washington], and then there are several other symphonies for
other orchestras that I’m doing.

BD: When the commissions come in, how specific
are they
in what they request? Do they just say, “Write
a piece,” or do they
say, “Write a symphony,”
or, “Write a 20-minute symphony”?

AH: Bellevue wanted a 30-minute symphony
— a major one — so I gave them
that. It’ll be played early next
year. Other
symphonies want something perhaps 20 minutes.

BD: Does that constrain you to be writing with a
stopwatch?

AH: No. I never do, anyway. I have an
instinct about
timing, so if I have more to say, I save it for another symphony, if it’s
got to be a shorter work.

BD: A moment ago I asked about composers.
Are there
too many performers now?

AH: No, I don’t think
so. There are fewer good performers,
actually. I think there was a time when there were a great many
performers.
In a way, there are too many to get along, but a performer
stands a better chance [than a composer] to survive. I’m
only speaking
from a practical standpoint, of course. I am glad to see
composers
and encourage them, and I do what I can to be helpful, because they
need
lots of help. They don’t get too much
understanding, many times.
But there are lots of good ones around here. There are some very
good ones.

BD: Young ones or mature ones?

AH: Both. Some are quite mature, and I’d
like
to see them get along a lot better.

BD: We’ll just have to
encourage more performances.
How do we get the public to accept more modern music?

AH: That’s the stupidity of
conductors and managers,
sometimes. In a way, composers got a little far from the reality
of life. They got too intellectual. We were rebelling
against
all emotion for a while — like the John Cage
ticket. He was
a very good composer when he was young. But then he went and saw
Boulez, and he
said, “Emotional music is written to show how
emotional
the composer was when he wrote it, and intellectual music is written to
show how intellectual the composer was who wrote it,”
and that way he destroys
everything. The New York people think they’re
gods, and they’re too
dictatorial. So it turns back on them after a while, because
people are trying to understand, and they don’t.
If they don’t get
anything out of a piece — if nobody gets
anything out of a piece, except
another composer who’s writing in the same style
— by and by there’s going
to be a disaster. People are going to not want to play any new
music.
For a conductor who doesn’t read music very well,
the simplest thing is
to avoid all contemporary music, because he thinks they’re
all dangerous, and that’s not true.

BD: How much should the public understand of a
piece the
first time? How accessible should it be?

AH: I won’t
put any rule to it, but if it’s
a really good piece, people can get quite a lot out of it the first
time. I’ve had quite a wonderful reaction
from the Mount St. Helens
Symphony. People were screaming, and standing up, and crying,
and all that. Of course this is against the rules because it’s
very
emotional, but I won’t say I was emotional when I
wrote it. I write
according to my own rules.

BD: Then you let your music stir the emotion in
other people?

AH: Yes.

BD: Is that the real aim of music, to stir
emotion?

AH: If it doesn’t stir any
emotion, it’s very boring. For
instance, there’s no music more intellectual than
the Kunst der Fuge
of Bach, which I’ve studied all my life. I
don’t think most musicians
know what’s in that work. They don’t
know enough about counterpoint
to understand it. But it’s an extraordinary
work, and I find it very
emotional, too. Not that Bach was trying to be emotional.
He
didn’t have to try to be emotional. He
wrote for God, and that was
it.

BD: That’s a pretty good
audience.

AH: Yes. [Chuckles]

BD: Many of your works have a religious overtone
or a religious
significance. Is that something special to you, or is it
something
you’re trying to bring out?

AH: I guess I can’t help
it. I’m religious,
in a way. I find good in all religions, so I’m
not just trying to
sell religion, like an insurance man.

BD: Should you try to sell music like an
insurance man?

AH: No, I don’t try to sell
it. I have some interest
in what Emerson said about that. “If you
have something which is good
for the world, the world will beat a path to your door.”
You don’t
have to sell it, and I don’t try to sell
it. I know that I’ve missed
out on many things because of that, but I don’t
think I could sell it anyway.
I would probably do more damage if I tried to sell it than if I just
shut
up.

BD: Is it wrong, though, for others to try and
sell your
music by repeated recordings or repeated performances?

AH: That’s fine, and I’m
willing to do it, if I can, with
recordings. I’m glad to do that. If I
can get enough money
together to make a recording, I’ll do it.
But I do that because I
want the music to be heard.

BD: Is there any danger that if a piece is heard
too often,
or in the wrong places, that it might become trivialized?

AH: I don’t think so.
If a piece becomes too popular,
it may be left unplayed for a while. But I don’t
get snobbish about
popular music, or pieces that are very popular that everybody
loves.
I don’t get superior to them, because if they’re
a masterpiece they’re
a masterpiece, and they’ll come back again.
I think Handel’s Messiah,
for instance, as well as all of Handel’s work, is
some of the greatest
music that’s ever been written. I’m
a tremendous admirer of Handel.
I’m a tremendous admirer of Sibelius, and I’m
not like Stravinsky, who
just says, “Well, Sibelius wrote Finlandia
so he’s no good,” because
Finlandia’s
a damn good piece, too! It’s a popular
piece, and it was written
to defeat the Russians, and it worked. The ancient Chinese did
that,
you know. They had gagaku pieces to smite the enemy, and Finlandia
was that kind of a piece.

BD: I’m glad you brought up
the Chinese because you have
seemed to bring East and West together.

AH: It’s one world, and we’re
all human beings.
It’s a very small planet, and I think we all
discover certain things.
We learn things from each other, and lot of things we think we’ve
just
learned today were actually known a long time ago. The psychology
of Freud was known by the Tibetan priests and was in the Book of
the
Dead of the Tibetans. It says, “Don’t
fall in love with your
parents. You’ll see many people having sex
before you’re born.
Be careful, then. You’ll be born into a
pigpen if you aren’t careful.
But if you have to be born, if you’re a man, don’t
fall in love with your
mother and hate your father; and if you’re a
girl, don’t fall in love with
your father and hate your mother.” So Freud
was known very well to
the Tibetans, and to the ancient Buddhists.

BD: It’s all human nature.

AH: Yes. So these things are the same all
over the
world, I guess.

BD: Is human nature changing at all, or is
human nature
the same as it was thousands of years ago?

AH: We have our periods of barbarism and
civilization, and I hope civilization
will last a little longer. We’re not
changing for the better, necessarily.
We’re more scientific than we were before. I’m
all for space, and
exploring space. I love astronomy. That’s
one of my favorite
subjects.

BD: What about the contemporary music of
today? It
seems that the younger generation — and even the
older generations — are
listening only to so-called ‘popular’
music, and ‘rock’
music. Does
this make a distorted set of values for that segment of society?

AH: We’re too used to
artificially increasing the
volume of sound without any increasing of any value of the sound and
anything
behind it. People are getting used to that, and they’re
getting deaf,
which is unfortunate. It’s not doing
anything for their mind.
I’m very much interested in troubadour and folk
music of real value. There’s wonderful
things that have been done very naturally, but
with this kind of sensational exaggeration of just loudness, everything
else has to be sensational, so unfortunately the quality gets more and
more
empty, and that’s dangerous.

BD: Is ‘rock’
music?

AH: Some of the earlier ones were interesting,
yes. They were trying to imitate
Oriental music, but they didn’t study it enough,
and they didn’t really
understand it. They were imitating it on the surface. I
like to go back to the real roots of the Earth, rather than the
commercial
imitations and oversimplifications of them. Anyway, there’s
very
little in music I can stand, but what I do like, I like very much.

BD: Besides Handel, what?

AH: I love Mozart, Schubert, and Haydn,
naturally, and all the great composers.

BD: Are there any ‘great’
composers you feel it’s
a mistake to give that accolade?

AH: No. If they’ve
been called great for a long period
of time, they usually have greatness in them. There are some that
are favorites of mine, and others that are not favorites of mine, but I
don’t say that
they aren’t great. That’s
a matter of taste and temperament.

BD: Is the taste and temperament of the public
always right?

AH: No, I don’t think they’re
ever right, but they come
near the truth sometimes.

* *
*
* *

BD: You’ve written some
operas, and I want to ask about
them. Slonimsky,
in the Baker’s
Dictionary, said that you
wrote two operas, two quasi-operas, and one pseudo-opera. What
are
the distinctions to provoke those different labels?

AH: I wondered about that. [Laughter]
Most of my operas are
not operas in the sense of either Wagner or Verdi, or the other
Italians,
or Mozart, or Handel, who was a great opera composer. I like very
much the Japanese noh drama. When I was a kid in school, I wrote
operas for the school. One, called Daniel, which we did
back
in 1925. I wrote it in 1924, or something like that, and then
another
one called Lotus Blossom [which was performed March 8 and 9,
1929
at Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts]. I had a
clever
librettist [Edgar Desmond Hegh] who was also in the same school, and we
worked together, and then the school produced them.

Since then I’ve
had very few operatic productions. The large ones are
very expensive to do. I have a large one on Shakespeare called Pericles
[Op. 283 (1975)]. It’s never been
done. I’ve never been able
to afford even a set of parts for it. It’s
too expensive, and I
don’t have time to copy it myself. I’d
go blind. [Laughs]
That’s for full orchestra and chorus. It’s
a big work. But
some operas have been done [asks his wife, Hinako Fujihara Hovhaness, “What’s
the title of the one that I wrote for you?”
She tells him, “Tale
of the Sun Goddess Going into the Stone House” (Op.
323, written in
1978)]. We did that in California and the chorus wasn’t
what I was
hoping for. They had a good group of singers there, but somehow
they
gave me a rather poor chorus. I revised it for another
performance,
which I conducted, but then I thought my revision was not as good as
the
original, so I think I’ll go back to the original
again, sometime. Another opera, The Burning House [Op.
185 (1959, rev.
1962)], has been done several times. That’s
for men’s voices only,
men’s chorus and two characters. It ends
just going out into the
universe, and is treated in a Buddhistic way.
I didn’t know the meaning of it. It was all
dreamed up, so to speak.
I got the libretto from dreams I had, and I didn’t
get the interpretation
until I was in Japan, when they told me what ‘the
burning house’ means. ‘The
burning house’ is life, or the body, and actually
it works out
that way. Then another is Pilate [Op. 196 (1963)].
I
liked to go to Switzerland whenever I did anything in Europe, and I
finally
lived there for a while. Mount Pilatus was named after a
legend. I got the legend wrong, but I like the wrong legend
better than
the right one. [Laughter] According to the wrong legend, he
was supposed to have gone all the way up. That means he went to
the
northern part of Switzerland, which is strange. He went
to Mount Pilatus and jumped off, committed suicide. It’s
the problem
of conscience which I dealt with in that opera. He was a sort of
self-torturer about it. You see the crucifixion relived in his
mind, and he’s tortured by this black bird on the
mountain. There
are these beautiful black birds which glide, so I have a black
bird.
That’s the only woman in that opera. The
others are all done by men,
and men’s chorus. Another
opera,
The Leper King [Op. 219 (1968)], which was commissioned,
was also an Oriental opera, but that was strange. I didn’t
know anything about it, a leper king from Cambodia. He had
leprosy,
and was assassinated. I had a tape of it, and a friend of mine,
Donald
Keene, who was a fine translator for Mishima, sent it to Mishima, and
Mishima
liked it so much he used it in his play, [Raio no Terasu/The Terrace
of the Leper King (1969)], which, strangely enough, was written at
the same time as I was writing my libretto and music for my Leper
King. So we corresponded after that. That was, of
course, a little
while before his suicide [November 25, 1970]. But it was
strange.
He used my music in his play, for the climax scene. [Chuckles]

BD: He turned it into incidental music?

AH: Yes. There are others I’ve
done which are
not conventional operas. Because of the impossibility of
interesting opera houses, I sometimes use smaller ensembles that are
more
easily gotten together in a small setting. Burning House
is
just done with one flute and four percussionists, and voices, so that’s
received several performances. The Travelers is another
very
short one [Op. 215 (1965)]. It needs just three flutes and
percussion.
It’s hard for me to remember all the different
operas I’ve written. Lady of Light
[Op. 227 (1969)]
may be called a pseudo-opera, perhaps because it’s
really between and oratorio
and an opera. That’s also based on a Swiss
legend which I changed
myself.

BD: So when you’re writing
something, you don’t try and
fit into one pigeonhole or another. You write the way it should
be,
and then let somebody else try and decide what it is?

AH: Yes, I do, because many things come at a
certain style
and a certain concept, and I don’t really know
what to call it.

BD: Some people claim that opera is dead.
Do you
feel that is the case?

AH: I hope not. I enjoy it very much,
certainly.

BD: Some people say that the opera houses are
museums,
and that their life span is very limited. You have set these
operas
in a certain time or in a certain place, with certain stage
directions.
When they get done 100 years or 200 years from now, is it going to
upset
you if they’re brought up to date, or modernized,
or if the staging is
such that people might boo at the performance?

AH: I don’t know. I
hope I’m not earthbound in 100
years from now. [Laughter] But it might upset me if I
was.
I think I’d just avoid the performance.
Bernstein used to say that
all music — all classical music, symphonies,
everything — was a museum, and Lukas Foss said, “Well,
I like museums.” [Laughter]

* *
*
* *

BD: You seem to be enamored with mountains, so
let me ask
you about another work of yours, Mysterious Mountain [Symphony
no.
2, Mysterious Mountain, Op. 132 (1955)].

AH:
That was written, actually, for Stokowski. He said, “Please
give
it one of your titles.” I was going to call
it Symphony, or Concerto
for Orchestra.

BD: So the title was almost an afterthought?

AH: It was an afterthought.

BD: Many of the other symphonies have
titles. Are
they forethoughts or afterthoughts?

AH: Almost always afterthoughts. I compose
music
without any thought at all. I just compose the music, and I don’t
know what it’s going to be, as far as any other
connections are concerned.

BD: So when you start a piece, you have no idea
what it’s
going to be like at the end?

AH: Sometimes I have an idea of the ending,
yes.
The beginning and the ending, and the middle. One has a kind of
vision
of the whole thing, very fast, and then you work it out. It may
change
in all kinds of ways when you’re working.
It may write itself.

BD: So there times when you don’t
have any control over
it.

AH: No, not really. I guess I don’t,
and yet I do.
It’s hard to say. If I’m
writing in a classical form, like my Third
Symphony [Symphony no. 3, Op. 148 (1956)], then I write in
sonata
form. But in other cases the form grows from its own ideas.
I may use fugue forms. I have a certain concept of the
fugue.
It’s one of the great forms in music, one of the
most perfect. It
can say many different things, but what it says, I don’t
know. I
can’t think of it in terms of words or visual
terms. Music is a sort
of law in itself, so I find a title that is suitable afterwards.

BD: Once you’ve gotten
through, you get a feeling for it?

AH: Yes, unless it’s a
commission by somebody who wants
something written for a specific event. But that’s
usually for theater
pieces. I’ve written many theater pieces
and ballets, things of that
sort, or television movies. Then, of course, I’m
the slave of
the story, whatever it is. I have to do one on Mount
Everest.
I did one on Mount Everest a few years ago, the expedition that
failed.
It was tragic. Now the same people have had a success. They’ve
been to the top, so they want me to write the music during this month,
so I’ll have to do that. But that’s
a fine subject. I’m very
happy to do it.

BD: Do you always have enough time to do the
pieces that
you have?

AH: I never have enough time, but I try.
[Laughter]

BD: I just wondered how much the pressure of
deadline would
alter the piece as it goes along.

AH: Sometimes it stimulates me. Sometimes
it
makes things go even better than I expected. Back in 1953, CBS
Radio
suddenly asked me to do the Easter Cantata, the week before
Easter.
This was the Friday at the end of the week before, and a week from
Sunday would
be Easter. That was the performance. So everything had to
be
finished for the copyists by Wednesday. I had a friend who was
visiting
me, and he was going to Greece. He was a remarkable teacher, a
psychic
teacher, a clairvoyant person He’s a
painter and a Greek philosopher.
We used to call him ‘the Socrates of Boston.’
[Hovhaness is speaking of
the Greek-born mystic painter Hermon DiGiovanno.] He was
visiting,
and I put him on the boat on Saturday night. Then I thought, “I
gotta
work on this now,” and the music wouldn’t
come for a while. So I
think all the spiritual forces are with him to take him out to sea, but
they’ll come back to me pretty soon, and sure
enough they
did. By Monday I had everything finished, and I think it’s
one of
my best pieces. [It’s the third of the Triptych.,
Op. 100
(1952-55): Ave Maria, Christmas Ode, Easter Cantata.]
I’d done the Christmas music for them and then
this was for Easter.
They were performed separately, first, and then later they were
performed
together.

BD: Should they only be performed together now?

AH: Not necessarily, no. I was happy to see
the Easter
Cantata done by itself recently some place near New York
City.
So I don’t know. Deadlines are sort of
stimulating. Sometimes
they make one’s mind really come to life.

BD: You have a lot of commissions, but do you
ever just
write for you, something you just feel you should write?

AH: Many times I do. I do that in
between.
Lately I’ve been having really almost more
commissions than I can take
care of, so I’d be glad to have some time in
between. Fortunately,
one of them has been postponed a little while, which I’m
very glad about.

* *
*
* *

We
paused for a few minutes to admire some items in his home and the
magnificent view from his windows, and then returned to the
conversation
. . . . .

BD:
We were talking about the terror in Mozart.

AH: Yes. For instance, in Don Giovanni,
the
way they began, in that movie [Amadeus (directed by Milos
Forman, 1984)],
it pleased me, even though it wasn’t
authentic. The notes were authentic,
but I mean the way they used the electronic sound to bring out the bass
of those first two chords, which are related to the first chords
when the statue enters in the last act. There Mozart
adds trombones to be more terrifying.

BD: That was a new innovation, to add the
trombones?

AH: Yes, but Gluck had done it. Still,
using
it in that way was an innovation. Mozart wanted to strike terror,
and the beginning of the overture always does to me. To the
younger
generation, I don’t think they get it because our
opera houses are
so big now. The orchestra of Mozart was big enough for the small
opera
houses in those days, so it really would sound terrifying to
them. They
could feel the terror of the D, and it sounds after the chord
goes.
You still hear the basses holding another beat or so, then the
next chord, the dominant with the 6/3 position. The C-sharp
in the bass also lingers on afterwards, forte.

BD: But, you approve, then,
of having electronics to make
it terrifying.

AH: Yes, especially in a movie. They
exaggerated
Mozart’s character, but still they got something
out of him. His
character was tremendous. He had tremendous vitality.
I think it did something good. It was exciting.

BD: Are there any Mozarts living today?

AH: I don’t know. I
don’t think we have the kind
of civilization in which a Mozart could exist.

BD: Really? Why?

AH: I think he’d be
destroyed immediately. He was
too much for then. He was kind of an angelic figure that could
only
exist in certain civilizations. He belongs as a world master, but
not living in the flesh.

BD: When you say he would’ve
been destroyed, what would
destroy him — the business of today, or the
politics?

AH: Business, politics, and the lack of idealism
in orchestras
and in music. People were simple then, and they could be
moved.
They could really do things. Even in Wagner’s
time, for instance, to make his music a success the orchestras devoted
themselves
to it. They gave their services freely. When they had Don
Giovanni here in Seattle, the orchestra was on strike! I was
so angry because they shouldn’t be on strike for
Mozart. They had
to use two pianos. They played very well, except they didn’t
finish
the overture. There’s some wonderful
counterpoint in the overture,
some terrifying counterpoint. I wish I could get another pianist
who can read well, and I’d illustrate it. I
want to play four hands. I don’t have hands
enough to play that counterpoint. You have
to play it in the four-hand arrangement. It’s
marvelous. There’s
a regular two-hand arrangement, but it doesn’t
work.

BD: It seems that the art of playing piano
four-hands is
gone.

AH: I know. It’s very
disappointing. I did
it all the time when I was a kid, and I had pupils who’d
do it. I’d
teach them, and we’d play Mozart symphonies and
Beethoven symphonies.
Schubert wrote much for four hands. Some of his greatest music is
four-hand music. I lived in Switzerland near where Wagner did,
and
I know those marvelous mountains. Every time I looked at them, I
knew that was Valhalla to him. That’s where
he got the idea,
his whole inspiration for The Ring. It may have started a
little before, but he didn’t work on it until he
was in Switzerland.
Virgil Thomson told me
at one concert where we were on the same program, “You’ve
been living in a queer place lately, haven’t you?”
I said, “Where? Japan?”
He said, “No, no,”
and then I said, “Lucerne,
Switzerland.”He said.
“Yes. That’s a queer place.
Everybody used to live there, but nobody does now!”
I said, “I wish they didn’t
because I finally quit because too many people live
there.” [Laughter] But it’s
a very beautiful place, and Wagner
got a great deal of inspiration. All those storms, those
tremendous
storms, come from Switzerland, not Germany. I love those storms,
and Wagner did too. His intention was to make Bayreuth into Lake
Lucerne, but the storms are too severe, so he couldn’t.
His idea
was to have everybody sitting on the shore, and have the stage
on the water, on the barge. He was going to put the
real mountains
behind. They’re marvelous mountains
there. I’ve been in storms
there. I used to go and walk. I could actually grab from
one
tree, and then run to the next one between the gusts of wind, because
you
can’t stand up on it. They couldn’t
build a barge that could withstand
the storm, so he had to give that up. But he was
a mountain climber, and he loved nature. He used to go out every
afternoon into the forest with his two dogs, and spend some time there,
and then go to a restaurant I knew in Lucerne.

* *
*
* *

BD: You say that times were simpler back when
Mozart wrote, and he wrote for his audience. Do you write for the
audience of today?

AH: No. I write for my imaginary audience.

BD: Is there ever going to be an audience that
will completely
appreciate the music of Alan Hovhaness?

AH: Oh, yes. They do, when it’s
conducted well.
I’ve seen it. I’ve
lived to see it. A fortune teller told me
I would live long enough to see the beginning of it, and I have.

BD: That pleases you, of course?

AH: It pleases me very much. I wish it was
recorded,
because nobody knows except that particular town.

BD: If there’s a tape,
would you try and get that published
as a recording?

AH: I’d like to, but the
union doesn’t allow
it, naturally. You have to come up with a tremendous amount of
money,
which I don’t have.

BD: Are you going to be happy
when your music is listened
to a hundred years from now, and two hundred years from now?

AH: I shouldn’t be around
by then. I should
be doing something else. [Chuckles]

BD: But would that please you?

AH: It would please me, yes, it would very
much.
The thing that makes composers very angry with military people is that
we don’t want the world destroyed, because our
whole life is in the future.
That’s what Lou Harrison
said. I’m quoting him in that way.
He said, “We’re very angry
at the atomic bomb, because the only thing a
composer really can enjoy after, he’s dead, is
the future. Nothing
is really satisfactory during his lifetime.”
Poor Mozart, I don’t
think he even knew what he’d written. It
was discovered mostly after
he died. He wrote so fast and for so many people, and he was
so kind. If anybody came to town and needed a concerto, he’d
write
it for them without charge.

BD: Yet some of them are masterpieces.

AH: They are!

BD: Are any of your works masterpieces?

AH: Probably I’m the only
one who thinks so, but
I’ve got to be, or I won’t
finish them. But my idea of a masterpiece
is very different from other composers’.

BD: What is your idea of a masterpiece?

AH: It’s got to come up
to... it’s got to have... I can’t
put it in words. It’s got to have something
which is worth
listening to many times. It’s got to have
form, it’s got to have
good melody. It doesn’t need to have
harmony. That’s not so important.
Vincent d’Indy, a pupil of César Franck,
and a fine composer in
his own right, said, “A good composer has got to
be able to write a single
line melody, without any harmony.”

BD: Are you proud of your single lines?

AH: I don’t know. I
have to look them over
again and see. I want to be proud of them. Music is a
disease
with me, it’s a sickness, so I don’t
know whether I should be proud of
it or not. I have to write and I have to put down what I hear in
my head.

BD: So you couldn’t be
happy doing anything else — not an accountant or
driving a truck or a taxicab?

AH: No, I wouldn’t be happy
doing it. My wife does
the driving. I used to drive, years ago, but I lost my nerve.

BD: But you haven’t lost
your nerve for life.

AH: No, no.

BD: Has life lost its nerve for your music?

AH: I’ve never thought of
that. I don’t know.
But I do love my music, and I enjoy writing it.

BD: Are there any pieces which you would say, “These
are
my best works”?

AH: I’m really too close to
it. A critic once asked
Sibelius why some of his music was so original and some wasn’t
so good,
and he replied, “You know, I love them
all. I love all my music.
But I know you critics, naturally, will know what’s
better, and what isn’t.”

BD: Are the critics right?

AH: Sometimes, and many times not. But
sometimes
they are. Some critics are right.

BD: What’s the role of a
critic? What’s the function
of a critic?

AH: He should be an educator, too. He’s
between the creator and the public. He should take his job
very seriously. A great critic is a great critic. We had
some
great critics. They made big mistakes, but still, they
appreciated
some things, and they educated people. They stimulated people to
want to hear things. The trouble is that we have critics
today who aren’t really critics. They’re
baseball reviewers or something
like that, and suddenly they get a job in the music section because
there’s
nobody else who knows anything. They jump in, and...

BD: ...just go to a concert and write about it!

AH: [Laughter] I don’t
get papers anyway, so I don’t know what they
say, and I don’t care less.

BD: So you never read reviews of your pieces?

AH: Some people send them to me. I remember
when
I first was beginning to be performed, people always sent me reviews,
and
they were always terrible, very much against me. I wondered why
they
had to send them to me because I didn’t need
that. Both critics and
composers need to be more careful about what they say, and watch out
for
dangerous things that may damage music. But I don’t
have time to
read, really, because I use my eyes all I can. Writing a score is
quite a strain on the eyes.

BD: You write all of the parts, and
everything? You
don’t leave anything to the copyist?

AH: I have to put everything
in the score clearly,
and then the copyist takes each line by itself, and copies it. I
often copy my own parts, too. If it’s just
string orchestra, I
often copy my own. If it’s for full
orchestra, they don’t give me
time. Usually they don’t give me time,
hardly, to write the music!
[Laughter] So I have to have somebody else, immediately, who will
devote himself to it, and that’s part of the
commission. You’ve got
to pay the copyist, but this way I can help composers,
because many composers are good copyists. They should be,
anyway.
At least they’ve got to be good copyists.
If they aren’t, they can
never succeed as a composer.

BD: Should we get all our budding composers to
come and
help you copy parts?

AH: Not necessarily, no, but you have to know
the whole trade. You have to know everything about the orchestra,
everything about every instrument. You should play several
instruments,
if possible. You have to know your job. That’s
one trouble
with education now. So many people are being taught to be
composers by people who don’t even know
themselves. When I taught, I made
them bring their instruments. Whatever instrument you play, bring
it to the class and we’ll write for you. So
my pupils had to write
for them immediately, and then I let them criticize each other. I’d
write one piece on the blackboard to wake myself up in the morning
because
I couldn’t talk when I first went. I’d
been composing all night,
and then I’d sleep for a half hour, and then go
and teach. So I would
write a piece for the instruments on the blackboard, and by the time
I’d finish a short piece, then I could
talk. The others would copy
that as an example, and then they’d write their
own. I felt that
we should always hear what we’re doing,
immediately, and we should know
how to write for instruments. Whoever plays the instrument should
tell us if this is unplayable, or is not suitable.

BD: Is this one of the problems with opera
composers, that
they don’t understand the voice?

AH: I think most good opera composers do
understand
the voice. Mozart wrote some impossibly difficult things.
They
go up to high G and F, way above the staff, but he had singers who
asked
him to do it. He was writing for real people who were singing,
and
could do it.

BD: But composers today — just
like they don’t
understand all the instruments, do they not understand the voice?

AH: If they don’t
understand the instruments, I’m sure
they don’t understand the voice, either.
They really should
be very well educated. Because there are so many composers, what
are you going to do with us all? [Laughter]

BD: Is there any kind of camaraderie, or
fraternity among
composers, or does each one work individually?

AH: There’s an awful lot of
it. I think
there’s too much of it. I’m
not one for going to the MacDowell Colony,
or any of those places where the composers go. I want to be
friendly.
I like the composers we have here, and we get along fine. But if
we see other composers every day of our life, I don’t
want to go to a meal
and talk music. I don’t want to either influence
or be influenced by other
composers. You need to find out what the truth is within oneself,
because we’re all tiny universes related to the
great universe.

BD: How much you keep up with things that are
happening
these days, and in other composers even if you don’t
see them? Do you keep
up with the newest trends and ideas?

AH: I used to, but actually I went in a different
direction,
so I didn’t do too much of that.

BD: What advice can you give to a young composer?

AH: The thing is that too many composers have to
earn a living. That’s the difficulty.
If they find some other
job that they can do that doesn’t take all their
time and energy, then
that’s fine. Unless you’re
big businessmen like Rodgers and Hammerstein,
or if you have someone like Robert Russell Bennett, who was an expert
arranger
to do everything for you. He was very, very skillful, and so was
Ferde Grofé for Gershwin. If you have people like that who
are willing to do it for money, then it’s all
right. You can be a
composer. That’s not my idea, but I’ve
done that kind
of work for people, too. I’ve been an
arranger.

* *
*
* *

BD: Let me ask you about one of your very popular
pieces,
And
God Created Great Whales [for Orchestra and pre-recorded sounds of
Humpback Whales, Op 221, #1 (1969)]. How did you come to do that?

AH: That was commission from the New York
Philharmonic. They didn’t
have money that time, but they copied the parts. So the copyists
got the commission. [Laughter] But they were in a hurry,
and
the scientists who made the recordings gave me a whole bunch of
tapes.
It was for Kostelanetz’s Promenade
Concerts. He was quite a champion
of mine. He really was very helpful. He was a nice person,
and he’d always send me a telegram or something
about the success he had
here and there with my music. He was always encouraging, and
bringing
things my way. So that’s how it worked out,
through Dr. Payne and
the scientists, and Kostelanetz, and the New York Philharmonic, for the
Promenade Concerts. I had a very strong idea and I showed that to
Kostelanetz, and he said, “But that idea is too
Oriental. The whales
don’t sing Oriental music.”
But they do. That’s the whole thing,
they really do! So I took a theme from an early opera of mine and
used that. It’s a little pentatonic theme,
and that was okay.

BD: Is that piece at all too popular?

AH: I don’t want to hear it
again myself, but now
I’ve got to. I’m
going to make a choral addition to it for a performance
in Vancouver, BC. I’ll do what I can to
make something interesting
for them. I get lots of commissions for writing for voices, and
for
choruses, and choirs, church music. To make something nice for
the chorus, how can you have the orchestra going in the way it was
written,
and complete in itself? There’s not much
chance. So I squeeze
what I can in between, when everything isn’t
going on. I decided
that I’ll have to let the chorus start the thing
off with a little cue
for the trombones so they don’t have to copy the
parts, just a little thing
for two trombones to give the pitch, and then the chorus can go and do
something a cappella for a little while before it begins. That
will
make it worthwhile for the chorus, because I can’t
stand writing something
that’s not really vocally splendid.
[Chuckles] They should have
fun singing it.

BD: Should all musicians have fun performing
whatever they’re
performing?

AH: I think so. They develop that attitude,
of course. They get to hate music, and I don’t
quite understand why.
Of course, if you make a routine of it in the orchestra, it gets to be
that way, perhaps, but I can never feel that way.

BD: It’s fascinating probing into the creative
mind.
I’ve had the privilege of talking with many
composers, and it’s very different
than speaking with an interpreter. The composers shed a different
kind of light. Even if some of the ideas are similar, it’s
a different
kind of light, and a different viewpoint from what the interpreter will
say.

AH: Of course, the interpreter has to have a
marvelous
technique. They have to work very hard. They have their
similarity
because they can become inspired by a composition and do something new
with it, even something that the composer hadn’t
imagined, but it’s something
that’s in it. So the composer lives through
it. I remember
de Pachmann [Ukrainian-born Vladimir de Pachmann (1848-1933)],
the great pianist. He was like a madman. When I was a kid,
he was a famous pianist. Probably people don’t
know much about him now.
I don’t know whether he made recordings. He
was a great Chopin player,
but I remember when I first saw him, he played the Beethoven Pathétique
Sonata. He started [Hovhaness hums the first six notes, then
pauses]. Relaxation, you see, and then he played
the next phrase... [hums the next six-note phrase and waves
his hands around in the air]. Then the audience began to laugh,
of course. I thought at first I was seeing
things, but then I realized that everybody else had seen it, too.
Later,
before playing Chopin, he would say, “God help
me to play,” or “Chopin,
please help me to play this work just right, beautifully, the way it
should
be.” He talked to the audience all the way
through, and he’d
repeat certain passages! At the end of a Mendelssohn Caprice,
he’d say, “Nice
staccato!” [Laughter]

BD: Sounds like kind of a nut, actually.

AH: Yes, he was very nutty, but he was a great
pianist, except the critics did say that he murdered Beethoven and sent
him to hell. [Laughter]

* *
*
* *

BD: Getting back to recordings just a little bit,
I’ve
often heard from performers that recordings are too perfect.
People
listen to them in their house over and over again, then they come to a
performance, and it isn’t quite as perfect as the
recording. There’s
a horn crack, or a reed breaks in the woodwinds, or something, and the
people are gasping as if in shock. Is the public expecting too
much
now because of the recording?

AH: That may be true, yes, but in some respects
the tempos
they’re taking in classical music are too
fast. They want to show
off so much, and you have to compete with the next, or the other
recordings,
and if it’s not as fast as that, it’s
not fast enough. But sometimes
they miss the true beauty of the music, which should be a little more
leisurely
and not quite so fast. Orchestras couldn’t
probably play that fast
in Mozart’s time. When he was a student, I
know Sibelius went to a town
where they said Mozart had conducted the Figaro overture.
He said that he couldn’t get them to play fast
enough. He wanted
that to go just like fire. Of course that’s
obviously the way, but
I think now, probably, they play it even faster than he wanted.
[Laughs]
But as far as recordings are concerned, they have to be pretty perfect
or nobody will sell them. I don’t mind
certain crack-ups and things
in the orchestra, because that’s part of
life. There may be inspired moments, too. That’s
part of life. I
don’t mind that, but the public, perhaps, is too
snobbish about it.
They think they know it all because they hear a great record. If
they live in a town where they can’t get all the
players, they may have
some semiprofessionals and some amateurs, but it’s
much better to make
music, whatever you have, and let it be. It’s
good for the people
who are playing to play the music. There’s
nothing more exciting
than having house music, for instance. I used to invite a
terrible
string quartet — as far as their ability was
concerned — and we’d spend
an
evening together and play all kinds of music, with some things for just
string quartet, and I’d play piano quintets.

BD: Then let me ask the big question. Is
music art, or is music entertainment?

AH: Delibes said music has to be an
entertainment.
He was a ballet composer, but he was a good one. He influenced
Tchaikovsky.
I think that music should be partly an entertainment, and partly
something,
as Handel said, to make you better. After a performance of Messiah,
the King said, “Your music entertained me very
much.” And Handel
replied, sternly, “Your Majesty, it’s
not to entertain you, but to make
you better.” [Laughter]

BD: Does your music make the world better?

AH: I don’t know. The
gods who inspired me
hope to. There’d be no use in wasting so
much time if it didn’t do
something. I don’t want to go to a concert
unless I’m terribly inspired.
I can read the scores. I have them here. I can think of the
music, and performances I’ve heard, and I can
listen to the orchestra in
my mind.

BD: Yours is probably a better orchestra, and it
will make
fewer mistakes.

AH: That’s true, yes.
[Laughter] But I do
love to hear a good orchestra actually play. That’s
a thrill.

BD: Are you optimistic about the future of music?

AH:
I wish I could be. I don’t know. I
really don’t know.
I pray for the future of music, that’s all.
I ask the gods to help
us. [Pauses a moment] It’s always
very dangerous because it’s
too commercialized and too expensive. We can’t
really do what we
want to do. As we spend more money on war and less on
civilization,
we get to a point where nobody cares any more.

BD: That’s the downfall of
society?

AH: Oh, it is, I think. There’s
nothing worth living
for, then.

BD: Is there any way to stop it?

AH: I don’t know.

BD: I guess I’m asking the
riddle of life.

AH: I don’t want to be like
these religious preachers.
Of course I don’t feel that way, but I pray that
it may stop. I work as though it was never going to end, and that
there was nothing
wrong. One should work up until doom, as though nothing was
wrong.
One has to do one’s thing, just as though
civilization continues.
I’m sure the same thing happened with the fall of
Rome. There was
no civilization or anything we knew about. Of course, there was a
great civilization going on in China at that time, with some of the
greatest music ever
written. But as far as Europe was concerned, which
was their world, there was no civilization anymore, for a long
time.
There were a few monks who couldn’t even read
Latin anymore. They
wrote incorrect Latin. But then came the Renaissance.

BD: Is this what you’re
hoping for now — a new Renaissance?

AH: I always hope for it. We have to work
for it,
and we have to be willing to sacrifice for it, and also do what seems
impossible.
[Pause] I don’t know. I’ve
seen some some very talented composers
who just gave up because they felt the world was so corrupt there was
no
use. I’m sorry they did, because they could’ve
done fine work. I’m sure in all fields it’s
that way, too.

BD: Thank you for being a composer.

AH: [Chuckles] I can’t
help it. As I said, I’ll do the best I
can. I always feel about writing
music that if it does something for one person, it’s
worth it.

Just a few more of the many recordings of music by Alan Hovhaness
which have been selected due to their inclusion of my other interview
guests.

This interview was held at the composer’s
home in Seattle Washington, on August 1, 1985. Portions were used
on WNIB in 1986, 1987, 1991, and 1996. A copy of the unedited
audio was placed in the Oral History
of American Music archive at Yale University. This
transcript was made and first posted on this site in May, 2005.
It was then linked to New Music
Connoisseur Magazine.

My thanks to David Badagnani for his help in preparing this
interview
for presentation.

For more information about Alan Hovhaness, visit the
internet’s
Main
Website devoted to him. Though it no longer exists, another
site might still be available at an archive here.

Bruce Duffie was an announcer/producer with WNIB,
Classical 97
in Chicago for just over 25 years. His interviews with
musicians
were a regular feature, and his series with composers won for him the ASCAP/Deems
Taylor Broadcast Award in 1991. Many of those interviews have
also appeared in various magazines and journals. To see a full
list (with links) of interviews which have been
transcribed and posted on this website, click here. He
would also
like
to call your attention to the photos and information about his
grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a
century ago.

For more details
about him, visit his personal
website. He is also likes to hear from people who are
interested
in this material, so send him e-mail.